Key Takeaways
- Privacy crypto rose 213% since bitcoin’s Oct. 2025 peak, led by zcash’s 2,496% surge.
- Zcash’s rise to 10th by market cap made privacy the only major crypto sector above its October level.
- Zcash must prove its fundamentals can support its new top-10 status beyond a narrative-driven rally.
Zcash Drives 213% Privacy Rally as Every Other Sector Stays Red
Crypto’s strongest trade of the past year has come from a corner of the market many investors had written off.
Bitcoin’s price remains about 36% below its October 2025 high, 335 days after setting that peak. The median asset among the 200 largest cryptocurrencies is down roughly 58% from its level that day.
Privacy coins are the exception.
The sector has gained 213% since bitcoin’s high. Every other major category remains lower, ranging from decentralized finance (DeFi) at -27% to gaming at -74%, according to Glassnode data as of Sept. 6.
The divergence has become even more striking during the latest rebound. While 91.5% of the top 200 crypto assets gained over the past 30 days, privacy led all sectors with a 90% advance.
Zcash Turns Privacy Into a $33.6 Billion Trade
Privacy coins in the top 200 now carry a combined market capitalization of about $33.6 billion, up from $7.1 billion a year ago. Nearly half of that increase arrived during the past month.
Zcash accounts for most of the move. ZEC has surged 2,496% and climbed from 82nd to tenth by market capitalization. It now represents about 62% of the privacy sector’s value.
Still, this is not purely a zcash story. All eight privacy assets with at least a year of trading history are higher. Excluding ZEC, the capitalization-weighted privacy basket has gained 85% over the past year and 56% since bitcoin’s October peak.
Monero has roughly doubled, while DASH, XMR and ZEN have each outperformed bitcoin over the past 90 days. Among the 25 largest crypto assets, only ZEC, HYPE, XMR and WBT are above their Oct. 6 levels. Two are privacy coins.
F2Pool Co-Founder Calls ZEC Rally a ‘Narrative Bid’
Not everyone sees zcash’s ascent as justified.
F2Pool co-founder Chun Wang described the move as a “narrative bid,” arguing that market capitalization alone does not put Zcash on equal footing with networks such as Solana or Hyperliquid.
“A big market cap does not mean a coin earned its place,” Wang said.
He pointed to Zcash’s early Founders’ Reward, governance disputes and a vulnerability disclosed in May involving the Orchard privacy pool. He also questioned whether optional privacy created enough real-world usage to support the valuation.
“A money whose private supply cannot be checked like bitcoin, and that needed an emergency fix after a four-year bug, is not ‘hard money,’” Wang wrote.
That leaves ZEC at the center of one of crypto’s sharpest debates: whether privacy has become a durable investment theme or simply the market’s most powerful narrative trade.
For now, the numbers favor the bulls. Privacy is the only sector that has fully escaped the post-bitcoin-high drawdown, and zcash is the asset forcing the rest of the market to pay attention.
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